Blueprint To Boost Prominence Of Higher Education - Idris

PETALING JAYA -- The National Education Blueprint for Higher Education 2015-2025 will be introduced later this year to improve the relevance of higher education in the context of globalisation.

Second Education Minister Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh said the document would also outline efforts to transform and raise the standards of Malaysia's higher education in various aspects, such as empowering university governance, democraticing access to higher education and improving graduate employability.

"It's also to ensure consistency with the primary and secondary education system and allow for seamless progression in terms of educational offerings, opportunities and advancement," he said in his keynote address at the 18th Malaysian Education Summit 2014, here today.

Idris said a focus area that the ministry would seek to explore was a knowledge-based economy predicated on high skills and high technology which could only be achieved through proper higher education.

"One needs to constantly learn new skills and knowledge and this is not just for graduates but also employees, the self-employed, skilled or unskilled workers, young and old," Idris said.

Idris said the ministry encouraged greater Public-Private Partnership (PPP) within the higher education sector as the private sector was an important stakeholder and shared the responsibility of raising the standard of higher education in Malaysia.

Local universities, he noted, had a lot to offer in terms of research and development, expertise and manpower and in enhancing existing technologies required by the private sector.

Idris pointed out that Malaysia spent 3.8 per cent its of Gross Domestic Profits on education, more than twice the Asean average of 1.8 per cent and substantially more than the Asian Tiger economies, namely South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore.

"We need to invest on sectors that have the highest impact on student outcome and, because of this, the need to maximise students' outcomes for every Ringgit spent should be seriously monitored," he added.